JFK Assassination Course (University of Alabama)

[Ron Bulman]

This 1967 document might be worth 5-10 minutes of class time.

http://www.jfklancer.com/CIA.html

[David Beito]

Thank you to everyone.  I was under some hard deadlines so I am now finally in earnest working on the syllabus.  The suggestions have been most helpful.

[Joseph McBride]

I do a short version of a "course" on JFK and the assassination

when I teach Film and Society in the Cinema Department at San

Francisco State University with an emphasis on Films about American

History. It's a history course/film course. Since most students are taught

little about American history these days, I make it my mission to do so. One

student called out, "I didn't know this was going to be a history course!" Well, yeah.

I discuss many other important issues in American history

and films relating to them, including ones that lie, such as ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN,

and deconstruct those. I devote two weeks to JFK and the assassination. I am pleased that the

students are deeply interested in the subject and have open minds, unlike

most people of my Baby Boomer generation.  We always have good discussions

and questions and papers as a result. I show PRIMARY (which

I am in) to discuss how JFK was our first television president and how it shows

the moment when politics and entertainment blended (the April 3, 1960, rally I attended in Milwaukee).

I read from Norman Mailer's 1960 piece on JFK and discuss how prescient it was. With it I show parts of Alexandra Pelosi's JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE to show how far things have degenerated. I sometimes show other material

about TV and history. The following week I show Groden's DVD version of the

Zapruder film (I run the first three times) and then discuss its alteration and the other

issues surrounding it and the gunfire and the coverup. I show the twenty-one-minute segment

from Stone's JFK analyzing the Z film and reconstructing the events of that

day (pointing out how rare it is for a film to analyze another film in detail and how

accurate Stone's film is in most particulars). And I show excerpts from RUSH TO JUDGMENT to provide

the filmed testimony from dissenting witnesses such as S. M. Holland

and Acquilla Clemmons (those have a tremendous effect on the students). I sometimes show parts of BLOWUP and WAG THE DOG to discuss film alteration

and microstudy. I want them to become critical of the media and to understand

how they are being manipulated and how they need to study multiple sources

and documents and books to draw their own conclusions. When I teach a section

of this course on Films on the Media, I do similar weeks on JFK and the assassination.

I sometimes show the great documentary CRISIS: BEHIND A PRESIDENTIAL

COMMITMENT, which provides a rare look behind the scenes and is more dramatic

than most historical docudramas. It would be good to teach a whole course on the subject of JFK and the assassination, but I haven't done that yet. One

of my colleagues devoted a whole semester to Stone's JFK and each week discussed

a different aspect of film's technique and content. That sounds like a fascinating idea.

 

 

Edited March 11, 2019 by Joseph McBride